Truth about Dibels: What It is - What It Does

Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) is wildly popular up and down the local and state education hierarchies. It s easy, quick, and an approved Reading First assessment tool. So what s not to like?

Everything.

In The Truth About DIBELS you ll find out why teachers, administrators, and reading researchers nationwide are emphatically resisting the insidious influence of DIBELS. Well-known education writers--including P. David Pearson, Robert Tierney, Sandra Wilde, and Maryann Manning--tell you how DIBELS hurts students and teachers and why impairs learning and teaching. They present chapters that:

• dispel the science and methodology that "support" DIBELS
• critique the validity of the information that DIBELS spits out
• demonstrate how DIBELS warps instructional planning to fit its limited measurements--and to fit the political
• ends of its creators and supporters
• expose the fiction behind its supposedly miraculous success rates

If DIBELS is creeping into your classroom, school, district, or state--or if it s already taken over--read The Truth About DIBELS. Then use its accompanying CD, loaded with a complete anti-DIBELS PowerPoint presentation, to show colleagues, policy makers, or parents that when it comes to reading assessment, DIBELS just doesn t work.

Kenneth S. Goodman is Professor Emeritus, Language, Reading, and Culture, College of Education, University of Arizona, where he has spent a long professional life observing the reading process in active use. From his earliest miscue research published in 1965 to the most recent presentation of his understanding of the reading process in 1997, he has continued to fuel thought-provoking discussions of the nature of reading. His research has earned him major awards from NCTE, IRA, NRC, and NCRLL. An elected member of the Reading Hall of Fame, Goodman is a past president of IRA, NCRLL, and the Center for Expansion of Language and Thinking.